Shack Fires in Lwandle
Shortlisted
for the New Contrast Poetry Prize (2023)
The dark season cripples a
father’s faith,
spearing its shadow of
despair,
into the marrow of a
township’s hope.
A shambled wooden box, fitted
with a corrugated lid, wraps
around brand-new bones.
Gusts grate through slats,
fingering
polyester pleats, enticing the
hot tongue
of a candle to lick at a
curtain’s seams.
A crooked crucifix firmly
nailed,
to a weathered blackwood
plank, fails
to charm smoke away from a
sleeping bundle.
A sliver of the waning Moon, a
witness
to the raging beacon of
desolation below,
retreats behind a veil of
smog.
Disarmed by fate a mother is
baptised
in ashes, her infant’s last
breath raptured
by the wind, and bequeathed to the west.
Saltwater
AVBOB Poetry Project 2027 | Theme: New Beginnings
Sweat
trickles down her collarbone
where
it puddles in her jugular notch.
The
sun beats down on the beach
transmuting
sand into a blinding crystal glitter.
The
glimmer beyond the shoreline writhe
with
an ensemble of summer’s best.
A
mother shields her eyes from the glare,
tracing
little footprints towards the surf.
Beyond
bobbing bodies, her young daughter beckons.
But
mother wasn’t built to float, or trundle half-dressed
across
dusty dunes, trudging through powdered shell,
with
legs wrapped in skin that’s dimpled and veined;
a
topographic map that charts the route
through
the wilderness of maternity.
The
sparkle of the South Atlantic Sea
seductively
licks at False Bay’s shore,
luring
beached creatures yearning for reprieve.
If
she could pretend her body wasn’t hers,
she
could do it; she would rise and place one foot
in
front of the other until her toes touched the tide.
She’d
allow the saltwater to pull her in,
where
she would be baptised and renewed,
and
take pride in her shape, forever altered
when
it grew a precious human life.
She
wants to be the kind of mother
that
swims with her child in the sea.
So,
she gets up and plods
to
where her child waits,
revelling
in her daughter’s glee
as she lets the water take her.
Teacups
AVBOB Poetry Project 2026 | Theme: Hope
I drink coffee from teacups with shameless joy.
Bric-a-brac crockery affectionately gathered over years,
handpicked from vintage shops I frequent on occasion,
when I have no one to mother for a moment.
Scalloped edges and gold trim, frame exquisite florals
and exotic birds on fine bone china. Staffordshire, Windsor,
Paragon and Royal Albert pieces live on my laminated shelves.
Breakables marked by The Crown all come home
without judgement of the past. Great Britain is not liable
for Victoria’s folie de grandeur, or for Kitchener’s savagery.
Porcelain is not to blame for the Anglo-Boer War,
or for the horrors of the scorched earth act, not for the deaths
of thousands of women and children
who died slowly, starving and diseased.
Pretty ceramics cannot construct concentration camps.
I drink coffee from Her Majesty’s delicate cups –
six, or seven servings a day – and steep bags
of English tea to fertilise the soil.
Ophelia
AVBOB Poetry Project 2025 | Theme: Death
She was not equipped
with boots, or the resolve
to commit to an uphill hike.
I rubbed out cramps
from muscles that ached.
I nursed her blistered feet.
I held her hand to guide her
through the undergrowth,
when she was young
and prone to wander off.
I lead her back to the trail.
I crushed the heads of snakes.
But gravity prevails.
Downhill is inevitable.
It’s where the earth’s deadweight goes,
like a boulder dislodged
from the slope of Kogelberg Mountain
during winter’s thunderstorms.
It crashes down and crumbles
across Clarence Drive into the water,
where it comes to rest on the abyssal plain
of the South Atlantic Sea.
My soul sister has walked on,
while I remain anchored
under tides of blue, drowning in whys,
and an ego consumed
with salt and regret.
Spores
Ons Klyntji Zine 128 (2024)
The Black South Easter thrusts
its rage, sideways
through hollow cracks into
this room, robs me
of sleep like a new lover’s
greed. Violent gusts
rock the foundation. Roof
tiles grind
under its weight, and rain
trickles in
soiling walls, where damp
ruptures to mould.
The blows worsen when I
threaten to leave,
but it knows I’ll stay, to
endure one more season
of madness. I cling to my
pillow
and my vows till morning comes.
Golden Brown
Stanzas Poetry Magazine No. 28 (2023)
I took your picture in the
hospital
after you had your second
heart-attack,
a decade after the first and a
few days
before you died. On your
second day home,
I complained of work. You gave
me
your last cigarette and
retired to your room
where your heart, finally,
ceased to beat.
While you were leaving, we
fought
to keep you. Boetie begged at
your chest
while I prayed into your
mouth.
Your lips moved, but it was
only my breath
gushing back, as your body
expelled
my pleas. I pulled you close,
assured you
of my love— in case you didn’t
know—
and then we let go. The last I
saw of you
was your hair, hanging over
the edge
of the sheet in which you were
carried out.
I think about your hair nearly
every day
and wonder what might have
been
if I hadn’t complained.
Retrograde
New Contrast Literary Journal 203 | Volume 51 |
Spring 2023
When
the moon is new, I seek to decipher
the
Morse code flicker of our bright speckled
neighbours,
as we skid in tandem
on
a dark-matter flare. Together we spiral
in
a vortex bound to a black hole core,
disillusioned
by inertia as entropy forges on.
I
wonder about time and imagine them free
from
government and gold, to worship gods
over
idols, proxy wars banned, breaths
untaxed,
and lesser creatures not caged
to
bleed for the health of an apex being.
And
strangers not film their kindness for likes,
or
parents their children’s tears for silver coins.
A
time when young minds thrive unspoilt,
and
bodies grow unaltered, disasters not designed
for
profit, and the fate of a planet not bequeathed
to
an overburdened generation—
one
prone to self-chastise en masse.
I
decode celestial winks and long for a time,
before
the Earth had shifted off its axis.
Ennui
New Contrast Literary Journal 203 | Volume 51 |
Spring 2023
a
strange alchemy
transmutes
this
bound
spirit
to
salt, and ego
bleeds
into the sea
where
I spend my days
parched,
waiting
for
an echo of
the
other
me.
these
waters
disinfect
festering
flesh
where
chains cut
lesions
into
ankles.
no
memory of
the
wild remains.
the
rising tide licks
at
my knees but
I
don’t mind
getting
wet.
Wednesday
New Contrast Literary Journal 199 | Volume 50 |
Spring 2022
The
purity of a bleached canvas freshly prepared at dawn, disturbed by imprints
of
man and dog, which snake around the shoreline before
and
behind me.
Delicate
shells with Art Deco-like curves, compete with sharp edges of shards
of
a crushed bottle, and a decomposing lump of soiled feathers forces
my
child to redirect her course.
Her
small hand cradles inside mine, tightly always, and I wish for her to stay in
the nest
a
little longer, in the sanctum of my unyielding commitment to guide her
through
the rot.
The
tide pulls back and gifts a humid breeze in return, which violates me,
dare
I say pleasingly, oh so pleasingly, to induce
unabated
minstrelsy.
Juvenile
verses riddled with whimsy, construct themselves until
dissent’s
architect disarms me wholly, and twists
sweet
words into war cries.
I
dare not resist being ripped asunder for those who look to see, the other
side
of the good, oh so good, but never
good
enough girl.
The
affliction worsens as the sun’s belly heavies, to induce the labour
of
pushing through the chaos of words,
duelling
for dominance.
I
mourn the descent of the ochre orbed giver of life and raise
my
glass and my quill in honour of the divine
keeper
of tides.
Caution’s
bane alleviates my affliction, and I
regurgitate
words that bite
out
over the page.
I
bare teeth and snarl at the state of the human race,
and
its devils, oh so many devils, I protect
my
daughter from.
I,
in love with the sea, dream
of
a life in the desert,
left alone.
Volition
New Coin Poetry | Volume 58 | No. 1 | June 2022
My
objection to coercion
and my support of
autonomy
is
penned here permanently
in
black ink on white paper
structured
with the uttermost intent
and
to invoke poetic license:
My
individual civil rights
will
not be negated for you
or for the presumed common good.